Internet advertising based on pay-per-impression often involves charging an advertiser for the exposure of its advertisements to users regardless if the advertisement resulted in the user actually visiting the advertiser's site by clicking on the advertisement. For example, an advertiser may pay an entity operating an advertising server or a publisher website to display the advertiser's advertisement for a certain number of times that the advertisement is displayed. While this method of advertising offers a potentially high exposure rate to numerous users, such simplistic exposure to such a large number of users offers little in the form of users generally interested in the advertisement, which would prompt the user to visit the advertiser's Internet site to purchase the advertised product or service. For example, out of 10,000 users that the advertisement was displayed to, if only 10 went to the advertiser's website to view the advertiser's products or services, the advertiser must still pay for the 10,000 advertisement displays, i.e., “impressions.”
Thus, it is desirable for the advertiser to use advertising servers and/or publisher servers that reduce the amount of fraudulent traffic and untargeted users in order to provide an advertisement to as many potential customers as possible.